[ExI] Clark abstract

[hkhenson]

>
>http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Capitalism%20Genes.pdf

Abstract:

Before 1800 all societies, including England, were Malthusian.
The average man or woman had 2 surviving children. Such
societies were also Darwinian. Some reproductively successful
groups produced more than 2 surviving children, increasing their
share of the population, while other groups produced less, so that
their share declined. But unusually in England, this selection for
men was based on economic success from at least 1250, not
success in violence as in some other pre-industrial societies. The
richest male testators left twice as many children as the poorest.
Consequently the modern population of the English is largely
descended from the economic upper classes of the middle ages.
At the same time, from 1150 to 1800 in England there are clear
signs of changes in average economic preferences towards more
“capitalist” attitudes. The highly capitalistic nature of English
society by 1800 – individualism, low time preference rates, long
work hours, high levels of human capital – may thus stem from
the nature of the Darwinian struggle in a very stable agrarian
society in the long run up to the Industrial Revolution. The
triumph of capitalism in the modern world thus may lie as much
in our genes as in ideology or rationality.
Gregory Clark
University of California, Davis, CA 95616
(gclark at ucdavis.edu)

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BTW, one of the amusing things about the parent 
thread was the ethnic origin of the Church of England Bishop that wrote it.

Which brings up a recursive point.  What is the 
evolutionary origin of the reluctance in some 
groups to make reference to ethnic or cultural 
groups?  It can be accounted for as a learned 
element of culture, but even there you have to 
account for why people would spread this 
particular idea.  Considering the mess Watson got 
in recently, the mental hooks must be into some 
really motivating part of the brain.  Anyone for some fMRI?

Keith